China Says Some Victims of Land Clash Burned Alive

BEIJING, Oct 16 (Reuters) - Chinese villagers kidnapped
construction workers, tied them up, doused them in gasoline and
set it ablaze when a land dispute turned violent, the government
said on Thursday, providing grisly details of the latest bout of
rural unrest.

Eight people died in Tuesday's unrest when tension over a
new trading and logistics centre boiled over in Jinning, a
suburb of Kunming, the capital of Yunnan province in China's
southwest.

Six of the dead were workers and the other two villagers,
while 18 people were injured, one of them seriously.

The Kunming government's propaganda department said on its
official microblog that residents of Fuyou village had been
upset for many months over compensation for the land being used
in the project, and had already forced building to stop in May.

But on Tuesday, thousands of workers flooded back to the
site to resume construction, it added.

"On that day, eight workers who were having breakfast in
Fuyou village were illegally detained by villagers, their hands
and legs tied up, they were beaten, had gasoline poured on them
and were then taken to a road near the building site," the
government said.

Later, hundreds of villagers raided the construction site
and fought with workers.

"During the clash, villagers threw home-made explosives into
the crowd and set the kidnapped workers alight, while the
workers fought the villagers with their tools, causing serious
injuries and loss of life," the government said in a brief
statement.

Police will severely punish those who "organised, carried
out and proactively participated in illegal criminal activities,
no matter who they are", the government added, without giving
details.

Land disputes are one of the main causes of the tens of
thousands of protests across China each year. Most go
unreported, though some, such as a revolt in the southern
village of Wukan in 2011, have attained a high profile and
spurred Beijing to promise action.

China's slowing economy has reduced tax revenues for local
governments at a time when the cooling property market has also
dampened land sales, an important source of government income.

The unrest in Yunnan comes as the ruling Communist Party
meets next week for a conclave to discuss how to strengthen the
rule of law, in hopes of damping instability that is greatly
feared by the party.
(Reporting by Ben Blanchard; Editing by Clarence Fernandez)